Internet scam?

Some of you may remember an interview on Hannity and Colmes with Michael Crook. Crook was the owner of "Forsake The Troops", a website dedicated to trashing military personnel's intelligence and courage and calling them leeches on the American public. Hannity and Colmes pretty much skewered the guy on national TV, certainly a well-deserved humiliation.

Appearing on a Fox News Channel talk show, naturally there were many conservatives who were disgusted by Crook and his website. Good news. An Air Force group was able to buy the domain name and space from the web hosting company that hosted Crook's site and replace it with a friendlier site. The web hosting company even apologized:

We don’t normally air business matters with clients in the public, as we believe in respecting clients’ privacy, however, Forsake The Troops, led by Scott Vogel and Laurie Vogel, chose to bring their business out in the public by way of threats and obscenities towards us. We find it tasteless that they felt that the fact the owner of SMIS has a biracial child is something to be used against him.

We apologize to the many people who were offended, and thank those who wrote in to complain, giving us the documentation to show that the Internet community did not appreciate their presence.

Furthermore, Forsake The Troops has chosen to refuse to honor an outstanding bill for some services. The money isn’t of concern to us, though it costs money to run the servers, we have many customers who are good, decent people and pay their bills on time.

Of course, the website was put up again, except with .net instead of .info, since SMIS (Small Mike Internet Service) had sold the site out from under the delinquent originator. But, fortunately, the financial problems of the evil person(s) putting up the site allowed SMIS to sell that domain name and site as well to a different offended party.

And the CitizensAgainstTheTroops domain name and site to a different offended party.

And the ForsakeThePolice to a different offended party.

And the ForsakeTheFirefighters to a different offended party.

And the various white supremist hate sites were taken off the Internet by various offended parties willing to buy out the offending domain name and web space to have the various sites removed.

Michael Crook is the guy that owns SMIS! He puts up hate sites and extracts money from offended parties to have the sites removed.

Next thing someone will tell me is that the "Save Toby" website is really a hoax. OH, MY GOD :surprised IT'S AUGUST ALREADY!!!! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! TOOOOOOOBBBBEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

Whew, my bad, I thought his deadline had already expired. Turns out we have until November 2006 to raise the ransom before Toby's eaten.

Edit: Hannity and Colmes should be as embarassed as 60 Minutes was. This was exposed as a hoax in February and they aired the interview in May. Museum of Hoaxes Not exposed widely enough to prevent Crook from cashing in on his TV appearance, though.